Brocade Patent Grants

Multicast in a trill network

Granted: August 2, 2016
Patent Number: 9407533
One embodiment of the present invention provides a switch. A switch includes a storage and a multicast management mechanism. The storage is configured to store an entry indicating a multicast group membership learned at a remote switch. The multicast management mechanism is coupled to the storage and is configured to suppress flooding of packets destined for the multicast group.

Converged wireless local area network

Granted: July 26, 2016
Patent Number: 9402271
One embodiment of the present invention provides a wireless network controller. The wireless network controller includes a data structure, a tunnel management scheme, an encapsulation mechanism, and a forwarding mechanism. The data structure stores a TRILL RBridge identifier associated with a remote wireless network controller. The tunnel management mechanism maintains a tunnel with a local access point, and the encapsulation mechanism encapsulates a packet received from the tunnel with…

Inline wire speed deduplication system

Granted: July 26, 2016
Patent Number: 9401967
Systems for performing inline wire speed data deduplication are described herein. Some embodiments include a device for inline data deduplication that includes one or more input ports for receiving an input data stream containing duplicates, one or more output ports for providing a data deduplicated output data stream, and an inline data deduplication engine coupled to one or more input ports and one or more output ports to process input data containing duplicates into output data which…

Virtual link aggregations across multiple fabric switches

Granted: July 26, 2016
Patent Number: 9401872
One embodiment of the present invention provides a switch. The switch is configurable to be a member of a first fabric switch. The switch includes a link aggregation module. During operation, the link aggregation module marks an ingress-switch field of a frame with a virtual switch identifier. This virtual switch identifier is associated with the switch and a second switch, which is a member of a second fabric switch, and is from a range of identifier associated with the first fabric…

Scalable MAC address distribution in an Ethernet fabric switch

Granted: July 26, 2016
Patent Number: 9401861
One embodiment of the present invention provides a switch. The switch includes a notification mechanism. The notification mechanism constructs a single message that contains a locally learned MAC address associated with a local device, a TRILL RBridge identifier associated with the switch, and an identifier of an interface associated with the MAC address. In some embodiments, the switch includes a data structure and an entry management mechanism. The data structure stores device…

Scalable gateways for a fabric switch

Granted: July 26, 2016
Patent Number: 9401818
One embodiment of the present invention provides a switch. The switch includes a gateway subgroup module, a tunnel management module, and a packet processor. The gateway subgroup module operates the switch in conjunction with a remote switch to form a gateway subgroup. The switch and the remote switch actively operate as tunnel gateways. The tunnel management module maintains a data structure indicating whether a tunnel source subnet is associated with the gateway subgroup. The packet…

Diagnostic port for inter-switch link testing in electrical, optical and remote loopback modes

Granted: July 26, 2016
Patent Number: 9401760
A diagnostic testing utility is used to perform single link diagnostics tests including an electrical loopback test, an optical loopback test, a link traffic test, and a link distance measurement test. To perform the diagnostic tests, two ports at each end of a link are identified and then statically configured by a user. The ports will be configured as D_Ports and as such will be isolated from the fabric with no data traffic flowing through them. The ports will then be used to send test…

FCoE VNport virtualizer

Granted: July 19, 2016
Patent Number: 9397958
An FCoE VN_Port virtualizer where VF_Ports are used to connect downstream to host and target VN_Ports and a VN_Port is used to connect upstream to further FCoE VN_Port virtualizers or to an FCF. An alternate embodiment uses an Ethernet Fabric for an additional purpose. The Ethernet Fabric devices all act as FCoE VN_Port virtualizers, so that the Ethernet Fabric itself is considered a virtual FCoE VN_Port virtualizer.

Pluggable transceiver module with enhanced circuitry

Granted: July 19, 2016
Patent Number: 9397753
Pluggable transceiver modules with additional functions and circuitry contained within the module. In a first embodiment, additional circuitry is added to determine bit error rates at the point of the module itself. This allows a much better diagnostic evaluation of location of problem. In an alternate embodiment, various logic is placed in the module. In a first alternate embodiment encryption/decryption units are placed in the converter module so that encryption and decryption…

Cable backplane assembly and method

Granted: July 12, 2016
Patent Number: 9392722
An electronic device includes a bulkhead assembly. The bulkhead assembly includes a bulkhead and one or more cable cassettes coupled to the bulkhead. The cable cassettes include floating connectors. The cable cassettes are modular assemblies that contain all the wiring and connectors. As the connectors float in the cable cassettes, the cable cassettes are blind mated to the bulkhead as standalone units.

Back pressure remediation

Granted: July 12, 2016
Patent Number: 9391849
Back pressure is mapped within a network, and primary bottlenecks are distinguished from dependent bottlenecks. Further, the presently disclosed technology is capable of performing network healing operations designed to reduce the data load on primary bottlenecks while ignoring dependent bottlenecks. Still further, the presently disclosed technology teaches identifying and/or suggesting a switch port for adding a node to the network. More specifically, various implementations analyze…

Slant angle vent plate pattern and method

Granted: June 28, 2016
Patent Number: 9380730
An electronic device includes a chassis base and a chassis cover which define an electronic enclosure. The chassis base includes a slant angle venting plate extending at an angle from a chassis base sidewall of the chassis base. The slant angle venting plate has a slant angle vent plate pattern formed therein. Further, the chassis cover includes a chassis cover venting pattern covering the slant angle vent plate pattern. As the slant angle venting plate is slanted, the available surface…

Method and system for signaling reduction on radio access networks using targeted intelligence for communication devices

Granted: June 28, 2016
Patent Number: 9380486
An intelligent system and an algorithm at a packet network to reduce the amount of signaling in the radio access network and core network is defined. The system collects all the necessary information from the signaling exchange between the radio access network and the core network and takes the subscription characteristics and policy information into consideration to choose the optimal way of reducing the amount of signaling including selecting the optimal bearers for certain types of…

FCoE VNport to FC Nport operations in an ethernet fabric

Granted: June 28, 2016
Patent Number: 9379976
Ethernet Fabric devices all act as FCoE to FC gateways, so that the Ethernet Fabric itself is considered a virtual FCoE to FC gateway. Further, the Ethernet Fabric allows direct routing of FCoE packets from one FCoE device coupled to the Ethernet Fabric to another FCoE device coupled to the Ethernet Fabric.

Redundancy support for network address translation (NAT)

Granted: June 28, 2016
Patent Number: 9379968
Stateful failover redundancy support is provided for network address translation (NAT). A master NAT device is backed-up with at least one back-up NAT device. Existing sessions are synchronized between the two NAT devices, such as via a dedicated link between them. In the event of a failover where the master NAT device is unable to perform its NAT functions, ownership of Internet protocol (IP) addresses is transferred from the master NAT device to the back-up NAT device. The back-up NAT…

Distributed methodology for peer-to-peer transmission of stateful packet flows

Granted: June 21, 2016
Patent Number: 9374302
Techniques for enabling peer-to-peer transmission of stateful packet flows in a virtualized network environment are provided. In certain embodiments, a computer system receives a packet belonging to a stateful flow between a first virtual machine and a second virtual machine, accesses flow associating information (e.g., network address) from the packet, determines a second computer system comprising a state analysis owner for the stateful flow, using the flow associating information, and…

Network feedback in software-defined networks

Granted: June 21, 2016
Patent Number: 9374301
One embodiment of the present invention provides a computing system capable of providing feedback to a controller in a software-defined network. The computing system includes a policy management module and a communication module coupled to the policy management module. During operation, the policy management module recognizes a local policy indicating how a data flow is to be processed and identifies a data flow associated with the policy. The communication module constructs a request…

Method and system for scalable and manageable non-access stratum (NAS) node selection function for evolved packet systems

Granted: June 7, 2016
Patent Number: 9363744
A network element having a Non-Access Stratum (NAS) Node Selection Function for discriminating information in order to determine which core network node a signaling message should be sent comprising: a network interface unit configured to interact with a packet network system; a processor with a memory associated with the network interface unit and adapted to: receive the signaling message from an eNB at a selection function; extract header information from Stream Control Transport…

Techniques for performing a failover from a protected connection to a backup connection

Granted: May 31, 2016
Patent Number: 9356859
Techniques for reducing the latency in performing a failover from a protected connection to its backup connection when a network event is detected affecting the protected connection. In an MPLS network, techniques are provided for failing a protected LSP to a backup LSP in a fast and efficient manner. In one embodiment, the faster failover is facilitated by storing protected LSPs and their backup LSPs information in the data plane, such as locally on a linecard.

Lossless connection failover for mirrored devices

Granted: May 31, 2016
Patent Number: 9357038
The WAN optimization devices delay ACK until the ACK is actually received from the target while opening up the TCP window. When the ACK is received and forwarded, the TCP window is reduced in size. If there are mirrored WAN optimization devices, the original WAN optimization device sends the datagram across the WAN and at the same time sends the datagram to the mirroring WAN optimization device. When the mirroring WAN optimization device ACKs the mirrored datagram, the original WAN…